Disney: Teaching Children to Read the New Fashioned Way

Today Disney launched a new site that houses digital versions of hundreds of their books. The site is a subscription-based service that charges parents $79.95 a year and aims to teach children to read in a variety of interactive ways.


Disney's latest venture is a creative move to begin making money through digital media and in an area --children's book publishing-- where Disney would like to see sales greatly improve. Despite my personal feelings for Disney as a whole, I have to applaud them for targeting the e-book format for children and for boldly offering it on a subscription-based service and thus leaving out the middle man.

However, I must admit my reservation is yet another old fashioned one: teaching children to read through a computer is wrong! And weird! And it's not how I learned! I can't help but think that a child should be taught to read by a parent or teacher and that the child must do a fair amount of the work in order to learn this most valuable skill. Will having a disembodied voice read The Little Mermaid from a digital page on a computer screen really be that much better or cooler than having it read from a real book by mom?

It might not be a hovercar, but the joy of learning to read via Disney Digital Books sure feels like the future.

Bye Bye Old Timey Phones! I'll Sort of Miss You.

Out with the very old, in with the newish.

We always knew that someday landlines would be a thing of the past. But Verizon's CEO Ivan Seidenberg declaration that their company no longer concerned itself with saving their landline business, seems to confirm that telephones connected with wires are indeed a modern relic. This announcment, despite being rather obvious, does prompt a few questions for me. How long will tranditional phone service continue to be offered for? Will there ever come a time when they get rid of landline service completely and just force those Jitterbugs on seniors who never learned to use a cell phone?

Only the future will tell.

Soon to Be Empty Bookshelves

There is no stopping the digital revolution. iTunes has made the CD irrelevant and the internet has given us up-to-the-minute news that makes buying a newspaper seem like an anachronism. But books? Digital can't take my precious books too! Who doesn't like to curl up with a good book, flip through its pages, and see book covers on your shelves? As someone who loves to read and has spent time and money acquiring books, I'm finding the impending e-book revolution a little hard to swallow. Will it really happen? Will consumers like reading their favorite novels on a screen? Most importantly, will I ever get used to it... or even start to like it?

What makes the transition to digital reading inevitable is simply that we have been through this process before with the iPod, and we all know how that one turned out. When the iPod debuted it was imperfect, clunky, and expensive. As Apple worked out the kinks and the prices went down, consumers began to abandon their portable CD players and invest in the convenient MP3 player. Right now digital readers are going through a similar stage in their development. Amazon's Kindle is currently $299, there are few readers available that offer color screens, and there are a variety of format issues. But as our iPod example suggests, as soon as the price comes down on an easy to use digital reader, people will begin to buy it.

And why shouldn't they? Consumers are no longer willing to pay more in order to have physical copies of their favorite entertainment. This trend towards convenience over all else (while not for everyone) is not only less expensive and convenient, but better for the environment as well. There will probably always be consumers like me who favor CD box sets and vinyl over MP3s and oversized hardcovers of our favorite books over a digital copy. But in the next couple of years the majority of consumers (er, the ones that read anyway) will have made the switch over to e-books. Perhaps the switch and the convenience of it all will even encourage a return to reading! One of the most encouraging aspects of the e-book revolution that I have read about, has been regarding how library users will be able to use their reader to access a digital library. Being able to access the NYPL at any time of day? Only truly great things can come of that.

It might not be the year of our Ford 632, but it sure feels like the future. I have to wonder though, what will we put on our shelves when all of our CDs, DVDs, and books are gone?

Hijacking Twitter Trends

This might be the understatement of the year, but it appears as if Twitter is the next big thing. Yes, I know. I'm arriving at this conclusion a little late. The thing is I really believed that Twitter was just a trend and that it would inevitably go the way of Myspace. And I'm not completely convinced otherwise, but what has made me stop and really give Twitter a second look is its potential to actually make money. After hearing the TechCrunch report that Twitter could possibly sell for one billion dollars, I realized that there are some business savvy people out there who believe that Twitter has the ability to make a lot of money. But how can a company with no advertising and no subscription fees be worth one dollar let alone one billion?

Twitter is the natural next step in the evolution of social networking. It allows users to post short messages that their friends--and the world-- can see and discuss. With an internet culture that revolves around blogs and personal profiles it is obvious that people really like sharing who they are and what they think. Twitter recognizes this desire within the internet community and has become a popular tool for those who want to express their thoughts and ideas (as well as uninteresting tidbits about one's personal life) to anyone who will read them. Twitter clearly has a following, purpose, and a tremendous amount of buzz surrounding it. But does it have the ability to make money?

A recent AM NY article outlined one possible way for Twitter to become a viable (but unfortunately shady) marketing tool. Spammers have begun to utilize what is known as "hashtag abuse" so that tweeters will accidentally stumble upon their spam. In order for spammers to get tweeters to see their messages, they post their message with hashtags of popular trending topics. As more tweeters go to check out what is trending on Twitter, they stumble upon a spammed tweet rather than the latest 140 character comment on Gossip Girl.

Spam is an unpleasant part of the internet that I have no real desire to defend, but its emergence on Twitter is important because it is an indication that real money can be made through Twitter. It remains to be seen what other creative ways of marketing and advertising will sneak onto the site and whether or not Twitter will become like its (finally) money making predecessor Facebook or if it will continue to hemorrhage money a la Myspace or YouTube. Stay tuned as Twitter updates are most definitely on the horizon.